The Sociologist Postgraduate Newsletter, July 2010
Editorial Scribble Welcome to the seventh edition of the Sociologist! We’ve reached the end of the academic year and are at the height of what looks to be a warm, spectacular summer. Perhaps some of you will be camping, attending festivals, or off to a hot sandy beach in Spain.
Inside this issue you’ll find the usual content, along with reviews, summer conference highlights, and a few poetic essays. Thanks again to all the contributors and to Lara, our new layout editor who’s done a fantastic job of putting an aesthetic touch on the newsletter.
Or maybe you’ll be at your desk writing for most of July/August. Whatever the case, whether it’s inside or outside, hot or cool, here or abroad, we hope you all have a relaxing summer vacation.
We hope you enjoy this issue and we look forward to seeing you again in October! Jenn Tomomitsu, Muzi Pandir, Lara Houston
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Contents
Editorial Scribble PG Research Feature What I’m reading now... Summer Conference highlights PG Matters: Letter from the Reps Review: BSA Conference Guess Who? Is your pen mightier than your keyboard? Critiquing De-Racialization in “Bleach, Nip, Tuck” My PhD Office The Paradoxical Ruin Into the Woods Contributor Profiles PhD Comic Calendar of Events
p1. p3. p5. p6. p10. p12. p13. p14. p15. p17. p18. p22. p24. p25. p26.
We want to hear from you! Call for submissions Next deadline: 15 October 2010 Want to write a review about a book, article or conference? Have a story to tell about doing field work? Is there a bit of advice you’d like to offer other postgraduates in the department? Do you want to comment on specific issues or debates? Submission Guidelines 1) Please email your articles, tips, reviews, stories or rants to thesociologist@live.com. We also welcome research-related photographs/ artwork so please send them along. 2) If you are a new contributor, please send in a short biography (1 or 2 lines), and if possible, a photograph of yourself so we can include it in the contributor’s section. 3) If your submission contains images, please email these as a separate attachment and then label them accordingly in the word document. This is because images inserted into a word document will shrink in size and will appear blurry in the final layout.
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Lancaster sociology research highlights
Research Q&A with Maia Galarraga One of the aims of this newsletter is to promote postgraduate research in the department. For this issue, we’re happy to introduce Maia Galarraga, a postdoctoral researcher in the Sociology Department. We recently caught up with Maia to ask her some questions in relation to her project.
In a few sentences, can you describe what your project is about and why you chose this particular topic? I did my PhD in Philosophy here at Lancaster on recovering ‘ontological accounts’ in the Philosophy of Technology which have lately not been very popular in the field. In particular, I focused on revisiting and highlighting the importance of Heidegger’s understanding of technology while trying to resolve some of the political problems within his account. The project was an attempt to move away from the idea of ‘alternative technologies’ (often talked about in ‘ontic accounts’ of technology) and formulate ways in which we could deepen reflection and open up to ‘alternative ontologies’ instead. I had an interest on issues around technology and democratisation but the way I actually got to formulate the thesis was almost accidental.
“I always had the feeling that the topic chose me rather than the other way around!” What has been the most enjoyable part about doing research on your thesis? For me the most enjoyable part was ‘writing up’ because I knew exactly what I wanted to say and I could just disappear from the world and write it all down. The tension and the fear of ‘not having anything to say/write!’ was finally over. Can you describe a worst and best moment during your PhD? One of the best moments was definitely when I discovered that I could talk to Joanne Wood in CELT in a very unintimidating setting. This helped me gain confidence to actually write my thoughts down and find my voice amongst the reading.
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There were a lot of bad moments right up till the end (and beyond) feeling useless and completely inadequate in academic settings. Having to live with the fact that there are printed copies of my PhD beyond my control is probably the worst enduring thing about my PhD. Three words which describe how you feel about your project. Some of these are not going to be very positive, I am afraid...: 1) shame, 2) miserably missed the point, but 3) did manage to finish it so something must have been right about it! Where do you see yourself 10 years from now? Ummmm, hard to even imagine... Maybe still in Lancaster and doing something that I can flourish with. If you could do another PhD, what topic would you choose? I really do not think I would do another PhD: one is definitely enough! But if I could choose my PhD topic again I would do some sort of empirical project involving fieldwork. Something on sustainable futures and democratisation of knowledge which are interesting and currently pressing issues.
What advice would you give to people who are just starting their PhD? Take your PhD project as a ‘starting point’ rather than an ‘end point’. Having too high expectations about what you want to achieve can be paralysing and end up being very counterproductive. I found it really helpful to think of my PhD as an ‘exercise’ to play around with arguments and learn to construct more or less coherent stories, as an ‘entry point’ into academia, as a way of learning about a particular topic...
“keep writing your ideas down, however, bad, simple or unfinished they seem” Another thing that I would always advise— and this is something that one of my supervisors, Alison Stone, always emphasised— is to keep writing your ideas down, however bad, simple or unfinished they seem. At the end of the day it is much easier to work on something that is imperfect but written down, rather than a potentially perfect formulation that only exists inside your head.
We want to hear from you... Please help us make next year’s newsletter even better by answering the following questions. You can copy and paste the answers into an email to: thesociologist@live.com 1. What did you like most about the Sociologist? 2. What did you like the least? 3. What suggestions would you offer to improve the publication? 4. Any other comments or suggestions (such as ideas for content):
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What I’m reading now...
“Haunted” by Chuck Palahniuk Review by Allison Hui
When my laptop broke down a few weeks ago, leaving me at home without computer or internet, I decided to spend the day reading. Having enjoyed Chuck Palahniuk’s writing in the past, including Fight Club and Invisible Monsters, I decided to pick up Haunted, which my partner had taken out from the library. For the next ten hours, I was absorbed in a fascinating and occasionally uncomfortable story of a group of people who have decided to run away from their lives and spend three months on a writing retreat.
“imprisoned in an old decrepit theatre, eating freezedried meals and becoming increasingly obsessed” What the characters didn’t expect when they agreed to participate was to be imprisoned in an old decrepit theatre, eating freeze-dried meals and becoming increasingly obsessed with making their situation even worse.
The action unfolds through alternating sections of third-person narration, poetic character sketches, and stories told by the characters to their fellow inmates. While I am not normally a fan of horror, I was absorbed by the social drama of the story. As in Lord of the Flies, the experimental society leads to tragedy, but in Haunted it scarcely seems an accident, as the spectre of the media industry and previous personal tragedy make some characters intent on fuelling their own demise. People both feed and try feebly to escape ghosts - personal, mythical or societal. In the afterword, Palahniuk describes how his readings of one story within the story, entitled Guts, provoked audience members to faint on multiple occasions. Whether or not you find yourself similarly moved, this book is a both funny and disturbing read. For more information, or to read ‘Guts’ (reader discretion advised), you can visit http://chuckpalahniuk. net.
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The 2010 Intellectual Party! The annual Intellectual Party was another big success! With about 60 participants taking part there was a positive and lively atmosphere all round, undoubtedly helped by plenty of sunshine on both days. Thanks again to the organizers for putting on two fantastic days – the theory tug of war and desert island texts were certainly some of the highlights! Below are a few photographs from the conference, however, more photos will be available soon.
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This page Above: Erkan and Annie at lunch Left: Elizabeth and Lucy Below: Sessions in full swing
Opposite Page Above: Andrew and Richard Below: The lively conference dinner
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This page Above: The Lake District trip Left: Katerina, Ebru and Julien Below: Allison and Stanley
Opposite Page Above: The Conference organising committee Below Right: Celia’s Desert Island text Below Left: John reading his Desert Island text 8
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Postgraduate Matters As you all know, the PG reps have circulated an email outlining the recent SDM and meeting with the Doctoral Director. As it is important that students become involved and have a say in the life of the department, please take some time to offer on any suggestions, comments or concerns about the points raised below.
Carla Banks - c.banks@lancaster.ac.uk Erkan Ali - e.ali@lancaster.ac.uk Basak Tanulku - b.tanulku@lancaster.ac.uk Dear Postgraduate Students We would like to share with you the issues concerning PG students discussed at the last SDM, as well as update you on the open meeting with the Doctoral Director (Lucy Suchman) which took place on 14th June. The issues discussed in the open meeting with Lucy were: 1) There was concern raised about the change to RA teaching policy based on the possibility that RA’s could potentially take on more teaching which would reduce opportunities for PG teaching. Tim Dant has assured students that the money and teaching time put aside for PG’s will be protected and that RA’s will not be put under pressure to take on extra teaching in order to save the department money. 2) Of considerable concern is the rise in fees for writing-up and resubmission. As of next year it has been proposed that these fees will begin to rise incrementally for every year that the student takes to write up. The department was given no prior warning about these changes and it was felt by both staff and students in the SDM that this was unacceptable and the practice would be damaging to students who are already under stress to complete. The department will therefore put together a letter of protest to send to the university. We will continue to monitor this issue and keep students up-to-date on any new developments. 3) At the SDM we raised the issue of waning student (and staff) participation and attendance at departmental events such as the departmental seminars, the summer conference and the PG colloquia. Both staff and students have expressed concern that the collegiality of the department is in decline. There were a number of reasons put forward for this; students are under increasing pressure to complete their PhD within 3 years and therefore, understandably, make this their sole focus; there are too many events running across the department meaning that students (and staff) must be very selective about what they attend; the summer conference has become undervalued by students as a space in which to share their work and listen to others or students who are nervous about presenting their work. 10
A number of suggestions were put forward as ways to overcome this: Streamlining departmental events – events could be organised with less frequency but could be bigger and more concentrated. More emphasis should be placed on the importance of the PG Colloquia as a space to become engaged in academic life and the importance of being involved in the life of the department should be made clear to students at the induction day. The format of the Summer Conference could be refreshed. Setting up a mentoring system for new PhD students as a way to introduce them to the department and give them more confidence in getting involved in the life of the department. Current students could volunteer to mentor and be assigned according to shared research interests. Offer students teaching sessions on presenting their work. A student at the open meeting put forward the idea of an interdisciplinary event based on the public role of the intellectual in public life. This was seen as timely by the SDM as it could increase collegiality between departments and address the ongoing threat of closure to particular university departments such as Philosophy at Middlesex University. The student survey will this year focus on the issue in order to gauge student’s opinions and suggestions about the department. The student survey will be distributed in July so it would be great if you could take some time out to go through it. Carla, Erkan and Basak
FLOORBALL Try out floorball by joining the weekly game – Tuesdays from 12-1pm in the Minor Hall where colleagues from Sociology, Geography, and other departments come together for a fun game. All you need are running shoes and a sense of adventure (i.e. no skill required). 11
Comment & Review
BSA Conference Review by Cliff Laine This year’s BSA Conference was at Glasgow Caledonian University. We were issued with our eco-jute conference bags and for three days we shouldered them as subcultural markers, faint smiles exchanged between gender theorists and labour market researchers. There was so much to enjoy about it, from the charmingly kitsch “blinis” at lunch which looked and tasted as though the nearest they’d got to Russia was a factory containing nut traces in Stoke-onTrent, to the fascinating publishers’ stands, to conversations with people which ended up with exchanges of cards and promises to look at books and articles. But of the plenary sessions I particularly enjoyed Loïc Wacquant, who, after a somewhat lengthy preface detailing the venues and dates of his recent world tour, discussed how New York’s privatised regime of prison building is attracting a sympathetic hearing by governments on all continents. His charisma and energy made me wonder if we had any candidates for a similarly polemical public intellectual in the United Kingdom, where, as
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Sylvia Walby had pointed out the previous day, the government prefers to speak to economists rather than sociologists about social issues. The highlight of the conference for me, however, was a session which explored this relationship between sociology and the more quantitatively orientated disciplines. A round table discussion about economic sociology undermined the stereotype of the antagonism between the two schools of thought. Chris Warhurst, from Strathclyde’s Business School, opened his talk with the words “It’s you [sociologists] that have the problem. You should stop being so suspicious”, and reminded us that many people now employed in management science have a solid sociological background. I greatly enjoyed some of the good-natured intra-disciplinary backbiting. A professor of economic sociology relieved herself of the words “media... consumption... the body” in a tendentious tone which one more often hears used for the names of gossip magazines or vacuous TV programmes. As she did, the room
enjoyed one of those head-nodding moments of in-group solidarity against more fashionable dominant fractions. The meeting broke up only gradually, ending felicitously for me by finding someone with similar musical tastes who invited me to see a Janácek opera with her that evening. If that’s how seminars in economic sociology turn out then I’m changing my subject area forthwith. All universities are designed to confuse the newcomer and often people arrived flustered and late for sessions. This was something I found annoying when others did it and yet embarrassing when it was me who on occasion apologetically ducked under the slides to take my seat. And I was slightly embarrassed for the speakers to constitute a third of the audience,
late in the afternoon on the final day, for a talk about their new book on ‘Multidimensional Social Science’. Finally, I must mention the very young and slightly unwilling participant who gave us the most awkwardly hilarious fifteen minutes of the conference. To the evident embarrassment of his father, the child repeatedly let go of a noisy and rather odourous accompaniment to an unfortunate speaker’s talk about the uses of visual material in sociology. If anyone has prevaricated about attending the BSA’s conference, I would urge you to get to the LSE in April next year. And it didn’t go anywhere, it was just, you know, a night at the opera.
Guess Who? Each issue we will publish a mystery person in the Sociology department. See if you can guess this issue’s mystery interviewee! Who knows, it might be your office-mate, a close friend or someone you’ve never met before. The answer is on the bottom of the last page.
Use three words to describe yourself:
An ideal vacation for you is…
Absent minded, friendly, puzzled
A beach somewhere hot with a library and waiter service
Worst habit?
The world needs a lot less ...
What’s your most valued possession?
Recount a memorable childhood moment:
Sister Wendy’s
A necklace my sister gave me for being a bridesmaid
Favourite food? Duck
Something you’re good at? Drawing
Pretentiousness
Obsessively running up and down the garden with pollen on my nose as fast as I could as my Mum had told me that I would be able to fly using this method if I reached a high enough speed. Still haven’t managed it sober.
Describ e a moment in history you’d like to have been there for: The very beginning!
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Is your pen mightier than your keyboard? James Tomasson
How much does your keyboard, the world of automatic spell checks, and size 12 Times New Roman hinder your writing?
Rather than the ‘tap, tap, tap’ of keystrokes, I find solace in the flick and the pull of pen strokes.
I’m not talking all the time. After all, there are probably more occasions when you bless your PC than curse at it. But for certain kinds of writing, I’ve become a strong believer that the keyboard’s functionality and its design forces one into a particular mode of interaction (or to use jargon from the field of science and technology studies: ‘scripting’) which is adverse to articulating one’s thoughts and consequently writing high-quality work.
The constant pressure of the pen on the page is also reassuring to some part of my brain, the place where ideas are forged. Maybe it accesses some region where the recollections of hours spent writing essays as a young student are stored, before the time when word processors eventually trickled down to the school room. All I know is that the pace set by the speed of the pen along the surface of the paper much more closely matches the stream of ideas. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe the ideas slow down and are forced to wait one at a time for the pen to make a note of them – patiently biding their time before materialising as ink on the page. Thus, only the most important thoughts bother to wait around to be counted or heard. The result is that all of those ideas are forced to persistently appear time and again until their presence is made concrete.
At particular stages in the creation of a piece, using a computer may not be the best tool available. Of course, I have no doubt about the utility of computers. But during those key moments, at the beginning when there is nothing to edit or rephrase, then maybe this is the way to go. Really it’s a question of speed. The keyboard is obviously a much faster means for getting messages out in the world. Try writing ninety words a minute with a Bic. But speed isn’t everything. In fact, I want to suggest that the “blurty-ness” inherent to using the keyboard; the punch, punch, punch of the keys is antithetical to expressing your ideas and emotions. What I’ve discovered lately is that writing a pen is a more enjoyable and effortless medium through which to access those ephemeral thoughts. Like when the ideas are crude and rough –without finesse. Or, when they stick together so much its hard to figure out where one ends and another begins. Sometimes it seems that writing with a pen is more conducive to the way my brain orders my thoughts. Perhaps the pace of the pen is much more in line with the ideas which seem to pour unendingly out of my head. 14
And so, when you find yourself having to get something written, try closing the lid on your laptop or turning off your PC’s monitor. Instead pick up a pen and spend some time scribbling lines and circles of ink for a while. Who knows, maybe having time away from the keyboard will dissolve any discomfort you have come to associate with the experience of writing on a computer. Instead, savour the continuous corporeal connection with your thoughts. It provides a direct uplink which seems to transfer directly from your to brain the page. So try writing the first few pages of a new chapter with your favourite pen and see what happens. And, in case you’re wondering, you guessed it: I wrote the first draft of this article with a pen.
Comment & Review
“I can now walk into Waitrose with my head held high” - Critiquing De-Racialization in the Documentary ‘Bleach, Nip, Tuck’ Jennifer Tomomitsu A couple months ago, I watched a disturbing documentary on Channel4 about people who undergo plastic surgery in order to drastically alter their ‘racial’ appearance. Entitled “Bleach, Nip, Tuck: the White Beauty Myth1”, the show’s premise was to demonstrate how increasing numbers of ‘non-white’ individuals are undergoing what the program terms, a process of ‘de-racialization’. Contextualized within recent trends toward cosmetic surgery and bodily commodification, the documentary draws attention to the perpetuation of westernized body images in popular media and the lengths some individuals will go to attain it. However, I found myself feeling uneasy with term ‘deracialization’ since it seemed to be reinforcing the very social problem it was seeking to critique, which is racism itself. “Bleach, Nip, Tuck” features three individuals and their quest for ‘racial’ change. Glamour model Jet, born from Afro-Carribean parents, claims her nose makes her look poor and that the new, narrower one she is having surgically done will make her appear wealthier. As one of the only black people in her gated community, Jet is portrayed as adhering to a particular belief that the ‘white’ nose is the ideal shape.
At one point she holds up a Barbie doll and says it possesses the perfect nose and figure whilst her own nose doesn’t fit in with the rest of her face or with the way she dresses. In other words, there is a class issue at work here as she indicates how her ‘white’ lifestyle is mismatched with her obviously ‘black’ nose. Showcasing her new face at the end of the program, Jet says to the camera: “I can now walk into Waitrose with my head held high”. Next comes Mun, a British Indian surveyor who aspires to be a model and wishes to undergo surgery to alter his facial characteristics. So far, he’s already made his nose thinner but wants to make his jaw line more defined and less chubby. He feels these features have held him back in the modelling industry and says people will want to be your friend if you’re more ‘white’. Having experienced a brutal racial attack many years ago, Mun says that part of his way of achieving triumph over his assaulters is to succeed in the mainstream modelling industry by transforming his face into an archetypal European standard. The third case features Tahira, a 32 year old Bangladeshi mother who wants to copy Michael Jackson by making her skin lighter. Criticized amongst her own Asian community 15
for being too dark, Tahira is on a lifelong quest to take skin lightening creams and goes as far as purchasing lotions on the black market. At one point, she pays a doctor £400 for a cream to make her skin one tone lighter, but with little success. Tahira tells the camera that she obsesses about the colour of her skin all the time and says the darkness of it makes her unattractive, especially when she is compared with her lighter-skinned husband. During the program, we are also given a brief tour of a cosmetic clinic in Seoul, Korea where swathes of women are getting double eyelid surgery to make their eyes bigger and create the desired fold which many Western women have. One of the Korean surgeons being interviewed even had surgery done on himself in order to slim down his typical round Oriental cheeks. He says frankly to the camera, ‘I wanted to look more Westernized’. Towards the end of the show, a few cosmetic surgeons are also interviewed. One surgeon, when asked if these surgeries were a form of ‘de-racialization’ framed within western notions of beauty, replied that he doesn’t see it as Westernization, but rather Globalization because the differences between races are becoming less noticeable as time goes on. Overall, “Bleach, Nip, Tuck” draws attention to how modes of ‘whiteness’ are maintained through the circulation and advertising of particular kinds of bodies in popular media. However, its own use of racial terminology to describe the plight of the individuals seeking to attain this dominant image is also problematic. For instance, one could argue that even through incorporating terms such as ‘white’
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or ‘black’ into our discourse we are, in fact, unwittingly performing racism. In other words, race is performed through the very iteration of these terms because it produces a reality that ‘white’ or ‘black’ does in fact exist. Moreover, another issue to consider here is the excessive attention on the body and the idea that physical alteration undoes one’s ‘race’. In other words, whilst “Bleach, Nip, Tuck” brings awareness to a growing phenomenon of people attempting to adhere to a heteronormative ‘white beauty’, the use of the concept of deracialization only serves to reinforce the idea that race is solely and inherently biological. Attempts to be subversive and undo racist tendencies then, require a kind of levelling, a mode of seeing bodies and skin colours uncategorically. As other feminists like Judith Butler and Donna Haraway have argued, this also requires a move away from the body as the primary signifier for sex, gender or race. Instead, if we shift towards a performative way of thinking, then race becomes an enactment, understood as a historical and discursive effect. Rather than assuming that race is essentialized in the body, a reconfiguration of race as performative allows for the fluidity of racial difference to be opened up. Perhaps the documentary could have been more critical by using the case studies to question the historical and material effects of racial classification, and shed some light on how we might consider alternative perspectives of those constructions.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/bleach-nip-tuck-the-white-beauty-myth/4od
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My PhD Office David Mansley Do you have a story about your office that you’d like to share? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Send us your thoughts as we’d like to learn more about how postgrads create work spaces for themselves. This issue’s postgraduate office belongs to David Mansley. I have used the room from which I write for three years. From the window there is a view over a back alley. Immediately across the alley, in the neighbour’s unfenced yard, is a pile of rubble, whereof many times I have watched an opportunist help themselves. The desk I use is an Edwardian washstand! I like the coolness of the marble top in the summer. It must have been at this desk that I first read Charles Tilly, an historian-sociologist whose work I admire for its integrity. He is worth looking up.
I try to start work by eight o’clock. This way, almost without realising it, I can get a couple of hours work done by the time I drink a cup of tea. It is hard to be consistent at this, but I have learned consistency has its own reward. This is not the only place I work. I have a picnic bench that is pleasant to sit at if the sun is out. The few good ideas I have had since beginning a doctorate have come, not sitting before a computer, but whilst outside doing manual labour. Why this is, I cannot say, but it has happened too many times to be coincidence. 17
The Paradoxical Ruin Gail Crowther, with images by Victoria Louise Fulton Ruins can be mediated by images. Light exposure, angles, the zoom lens. What is it that the camera both sees and excludes? Can we ever know, unless we are there, what exists to the left or right or behind the camera lens? Look carefully at the image. Taken at night, there is a creepy sense of things crawling; plants inch up the side of the research centre, the yellow graffiti tree squiggles, grasses spike and droop, the upturned chair and the green plastic pot, discarded. Yet the punctum for me in this shot is the dazzle from the sign on the post. What does it say? We can see a small red square in the bottom left of the sign, but no words, no instructions. Nothing to tell us where we are or what we should do or what this place was used for. In fact this research centre belongs to the disused and ruined Children’s Hospital in 18
Brighton. Found on Dyke Road in the heart of urban slickness, The Royal Alexandra now sits fenced off, security patrolled and sliding into a crumbling decay. It is truly an industrial ruin at the heart of the city. In less wealthy urban areas, old industrial buildings linger and decay. Gradually falling apart they are the rotten teeth in the new city smile. Fenced off and policed, feared as dangerous locations for illicit behaviour, they become a familiar locus horribilus. (Edensor, 2001: 42)
The hospital, opened in 1881 by royalty, was replaced in June 2007 by a glossy, new stateof-the-art building across the city, winning awards for its architecture and forwardthinking treatments. Like an ancient and unwanted relic, the Gothic beauty of ‘The Alex’ was abandoned and sold off. There is something particularly poignant about an emptied ruin that once housed a busy and bustling flow of people, ideas, information. They are, according to Tim Edensor, like a ‘phantom limb which has been chopped from the body of the network’ (p. 46-47). It is the stillness which is one thing. Yet, The Alex is slightly different to many other industrial ruins, for it is not an industry that has been shut down and destroyed. It has, quite simply, been
replaced. The vaulted ceilings, the turrets, the sprawling Victoriana of it all, seemingly out-ofjoint with the pace of medical ‘progress.’ These wards echo with the past, unable to erase the traces of its former inhabitants.
Murals swirl on the walls; undersea images of sleek, silver sharks, bobbing shoals of yellow minnows and a grey swordfish diving beneath the abandoned wall lamp. Do these rooms, these corridors remember the sick children who once stayed there? Do they remember the routine, the order and the nurses? The coming and going of visitors, food, x-rays, doctors, ideas, diagnoses? Do these images, like the very ruins themselves, invite us to speculate upon what it is that is missing? Certainly for Susan Sontag, the photograph is about loss since ‘photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos’ (1977: 15). Appealing to our imagination, we imagine the small child
losing themselves in the wall paintings, we mediate the ghosts in these ruins because the images allow our imagination to play over what they have captured (and perhaps in some curious way, what they have left out).
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Our sense of history, as Raphael Samuel states, draws on memory, myth, fantasy and desire, abolishing any categorical differences between the past and present and opening up a ‘two-way traffic’ between them (1994: 112). But then ruins are all about the dissolution of boundaries. Paradoxes lie at the very heart of how we read these dissolving spaces. For the more we see them slip away in a warped mess of cracked and peeling paint, discarded and broken furniture with grasses growing in between the floor cracks, the more we see they transform into something else. The disused becomes animated by an other. The surgical equipment, the nurses and patients may be gone and the empty wards may echo this loss, yet these people and things are replaced. Nature encroaches and reclaims; spiders house themselves between deserted
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bed frames; dirt and soil scatters itself across everything as if to re-cover this medical artificiality. The outside comes inside. And even in this derelict hospital, whose cavernous halls should feel blank and vacant, there is a filling-up, a busy-ness of discarded papers and boards in corridors, half open doors swinging on squeaky hinges. The order has fallen into disorder and created a whole new place and space. Fragments of ordered space fall out of their previous contexts to recombine like elements in dreams, tumbling down from their assigned places to mingle in a random, ongoing re-ordering, shaped by where things happen to land, in dis-array. (Edensor, 2001: 45) Even in the corridors, the painted dolphins swim through the detritus, leaping from the
blue beneath sagging ceilings, exposed wires. Even here at the heart of abandonment, there is animation and movement. The forgotten and disused building refuses to die but maintains its very presence in spite of everything that has been removed. The loss, in this sense then, is not really an absence. That does not seem to describe what is occurring here at all. But rather the loss perhaps lies in the slightly haunting traces which are oddly both there and not there at the same time. How is this possible? In this picture (below), we see traces of the former inhabitants; red and green jigsaw pieces pinned to a wall, painted rainbows and a smiling sun. These traces are here, for now, we can see them. Yet dead centre there in the photograph is a door lock, symbolic perhaps of what is locked out, what is not there and will never be there again. This is another dissolution of boundaries; what is lost, what remains – even when the ‘remains’ are simply the leftovers of what is lost.
Loss is inseparable from what remains, for what is lost is known only by what remains of it, by how these remains are produced, read and sustained. (Eng 2003: 2) In Brighton, The Royal Alexandra Hospital sits decaying behind fencing. It faces either demolition or refurbishment into luxury flats. While it stands, while it remains and falls apart, the past too falls apart and we piece it back together with our imagination, with myths and fantasies. References Edensor, Tim, 2001. ‘Haunting in the ruins: matter and immateriality.’ in Hetherington, Kevin (ed.), Spacial Hauntings Space and Culture Issue 11/12 December. Eng, David L. & Davis Kazanjian, 2003. Loss: The Politics of Mourning. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: Univeristy of California Press. Samuel, Raphael, 1994. Theatres of Memory. London:Verso. Sontag, Susan, 1977. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 21
Into the Woods Basak Tanulku “When a person has problems, then it’s time to go to the woods. When a person goes to the woods, there is a problem in the woods”.2 I do not know when I first experienced the woods. I remember that each summer when I travelled with my family to our summer resort near the Northern Aegean Sea. I was excited to get away from Istanbul and visit a beautiful place near the sea. Of course, this feeling was also a reflection of my quest for adventure, fed by children’s novels by Jules Verne and Enid Blyton; an adventurous voyage with a sauce of secret. And of course, the Northern Aegean Seaside is still beautiful after all these years, despite continuous efforts by governments to transform it into a replica of the Californian seaside. Ironically, it is similar to the Aegean seaside, being full of summer resorts and villas, with great mountain ranges behind to be discovered. I’ve always admired the changing textures of Nature. When we left the Marmora Region - a combination of dark green woods with large urban centres - towards the Aegean Region, a combination of yellowish green Mediterranean shrubs with smaller cities. I liked this contrast between the greens and the cookies we ate during the travels made by my mom. Maybe because of that, I still like cookies and pastries!! You could never find the legendary 2
English oak trees across the Aegean seaside, but there was another legendary tree, for which legends were written: the olive tree, the symbol of peace and health that was lying in front of our eyes for thousands of acres during our travels. Between olive trees, there were only small plants with thorns without flowers, usually drying because of the heat. Our summer resort was our only chance to become familiar with the “natural”, either by walking on the beach to collect shelves and diving in the sea to see deep waters (although I was diving next to my family on the beach, this was a real challenge for me). Sometimes we were climbing a hill with a group of people usually led by a senior, like my father, who took us to look around at animals, plants and ruins. I collected small pieces of nature and took them home with me, such as seeds, shelves and nice-looking “sacred” stones. However, when I got older and continued my education in Istanbul, I could not find the chance to spend all my summers in a place like that. Because I was staying in Istanbul and taking summer classes, over time, I felt totally detached from the woods. Ironically this was similar to my life in Istanbul which was full of exams and seeing friends. I was also distracted by the desire to consume spaces such as a newly opened cafe or a shop to be discovered in intellectual neighbourhoods of Istanbul.
I dedicate this piece to the Lake District and Cumbria, a land of beauty which turned into tragedy in June 2010 when the man coloured the green of thousand shades into red. This also reminds us that these places are not for us to consume and admire, but they are the homes of their residents, who have joys, happiness, sadness and tragedies. This is similar to “Antichrist” of von Trier when not a man, but a woman, the antichrist and the scapegoat of monotheistic religions is depicted as guilty for the death of her son, while the man is depicted as being superior to the woman, who becomes the victim of woman’s sins. In this movie, the couple goes to the woods to rid themselves of the trauma of losing their son. However, as you might expect, the evil woman creates problems to the good man.
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Things have changed for me since I came to England in 2004 to pursue my postgraduate course. Although for most of the students, Lancaster had never been an attractive town with lots of shops, pubs, bars and night clubs, it opened up a new door to me, which was locked during my career-building years in greedy and ugly Istanbul, full of individualistic people without love and respect to each other. Since Lancaster was a small town which still kept some of the rural features which had shaped English countryside, I was totally enveloped in it since my first day in England. The contrast on the campus astonished me: While I entered in the campus passing by a steep road with trees on both sides and a pond where ducks and geese were swimming, with the fells visible at a distant in a clear sky I thought I came to a paradise. However, then I saw the modern buildings constructed in the 1960s. Later I learnt the names of these fells, when I started to join daily trips organised by the university. They belonged to the legendary Lake District, of which I fell in love at first sight. And, very ironically, there is no place in the world which makes me happy and sad at the same time as the Lake District and Ida Mountains, the mountain range near our summer resort, which I try to visit each summer if I can find the time. I do not have anything to add to such a place which, in my opinion, is the beauty actualised in place, which has inspired poets and painters since the Romantic Era. The Lake District or Cumbria, better than in any other place is, in my opinion, the best place to experience England, due to its ability to create a tremendous variety. It is both English and Celtic, including legends of stone circles and Castles, thought to be of King Arthur and Pendragon and names which reflect English and Celtic cultures. It is a borderline between England and Scotland, shaped by wars and disputes between the two sides. It is both made by man and nature over thousands of years, resulting in the “beauty� so natural but artificial at the same time. It is both dependent on farming carrying the tradition of thousands of years and on tourism carrying
thousands of white collars to experience its beauty and tradition. The feeling it arouses in me is a mixture of everything: it gives me the pleasure of being alone and free. At the same time it gives sadness especially when my trip ends and I know that I should return back. As one of my relatives said, places like Lake District are not as massive as the USA or Canada, but when you go there you can see everything. Like a theatre scene, the Lake District has more than just one layer. At first, you can see a small lake and a river which intermingle, then behind it, there is a wooded area with cottages and cottonball-like sheep, and behind this lay fells not nearly as high as real mountains, but which still allow you to feel grandeur and dimension. A place like Lake District reminds me of my childhood, as unfulfilled and never-ending quest of going, leaving and returning back, and then again to discover the world and myself, alone in a dark wood covered with huge trees and the only voice I can hear, instead of I-phone, is that of birds singing and of trees dancing due to the breeze as if talking to each other. I always tell myself to accept the beauty of the Lakes, either by losing my horizon in a small forest near Keswick or a small tarn in Great Langdale. One of my last visits to the Lakes was in November 2009, just before the Great Flood. I went there in the evening, although usually I prefer travelling there during the day in order to see its beauty. While I was in the bus number 555, I didn’t know where I was, but I could feel it: with no light in sight, reminding me the artificiality of man, I was going within the darkness and unknown. But I could feel where I was. England has given me back the pleasure to be lost in the countryside, manmade or natural, with the feelings of freedom, admiration of beauty and the quest for the self and adventure. I sometimes think I am a lone wolf living in a small town in England, willing to go to a wood. However, I know that either natural or manmade, when I go there, I feel that I do something bad for it. I also know that the wood is a part of me; it is not a solution of my problems, as if I am a part of it. 23
Contributors Gail Crowther Gail was awarded her PhD in March 2010 for her thesis ‘The Haunted Reader and Sylvia Plath’. She is currently working on research relating to post-industrial ruins and Feminist Life Writing. Victoria Louise Fulton Victoria is a Contemporary Photographic Arts student from Northbrook College Sussex; she describes her primary interests as; Portraiture, CCTV and Surveillance in Society, Social Inequality and Difference, Damage to the Landscape Caused by Industry and Reclaimed Space. http://www.flickr.com/photos/victoria_ louise/ Müzeyyen Pandır Müzeyyen (or Müzi, as most of you know her) is a final-year PhD student in Sociology. Her research explores European Union discourses with a special focus on the kinds of inclusion and exclusion they produce. She is from Istanbul and she enjoys movies, music, books, tea and coffee. Lara Houston Lara is a first year PhD student in the Centre for Science Studies. Her work focusses on mobile phone repair cultures in Kampala, Uganda. In a previous life she trained in design and was the studio manager of a product design agency. 24
Allison Hui Allison is a third-year PhD student in Sociology and a PG Forum convenor for the British Sociological association. She is currently writing up her thesis that brings together theories of mobilities and practices in an analysis of enthusiasts’ leisure pursuits. Basak Tanulku Basak has recently passed her Viva. Her research is on gated communities in Istanbul and she is interested in urban studies, and social and spatial segregation. In her spare time, Basak enjoys travelling, walking and spending time in the countryside. James Tomasson James is in the final year of a PhD focusing on the materiality and practices of Aga cookers and reclaimed timber flooring. When he’s not busy contributing to ‘The Sociologist’ and working on his research, he enjoys hiking in the Lake District, cooking vegetarian meals and watching ‘Grand Designs’. Jenn Tomomitsu Jennifer is in the final stretch of her PhD and writing up her thesis on enactments of seeing and the material practices of scientific imaging. In her spare time, she enjoys music, yoga, cycling, hiking, or snowboarding when back home in Canada.
Cliff Laine Cliff Laine (LICA) is finishing an MA on social aspects of contemporary classical music, about which he will be wittering on at greater length in a PhD in the Department of Music at Leeds from October.
Maia Galarraga Maia had her degree in Philosophy back in the Basque Country. She came to Lancaster to study MA in Values and the Environment (MAVE) in what it was then the Institute of Environment, Philosophy and Public Policy (IEPPP). She did her PhD in the same department. She is now in her second year of postdoctoral research in the Philosophy and Sociology departments working on a project called ‘Imagination and Innovation in Climate Science: an interdisciplinary approach to geoengineering’.
PhD Comic
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Calendar of Events Departmental and Faculty seminar schedule Please note, this schedule is still preliminary as speakers, paper titles and date will change in the upcoming months DATE
TITLE
VENUE
SPEAKER
19 July 2010 9.00am – 6.00pm
Care work in focus workshop
IAS Meeting Room 2/3 For information: http:// www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/ sociology/event/3148/
22 July 2010 9.00am – 18.30pm
Insecure times, IAS Meeting Room 3 emergency measures, state(s) of exception?
For information: http://www.lancs. ac.uk/fass/faculty/ event/3364/
7 – 9 September 2010 Disability Studies Conference 2010
Conference Centre Meeting Room 2
For information: http://www.lancs. ac.uk/fass/events/ disabilityconference/
16 September 2010 9.30am – 5.00pm
Bicycle Politics Symposium and Workshop
Centre for Mobilities Research, Lancaster University
For information: http:// www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/ sociology/event/3299/
21 September 2010 10.30am – 6.00pm
CeMoRe Workshop The Mobilities of the Super Rich
IAS Meeting Room 2/3 For information: http://www.lancs. ac.uk/fass/sociology/ event/3329/
12 November 2010 11.00am – 6.00am
BRICs on the Move CeMoRe Workshop
IAS Meeting Room 2/3 For information: http://www.lancs. ac.uk/fass/faculty/ event/3358/
Guess Who? Anna Porter!
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Established 2008 Unless otherwise stated, the opinions expressed in the Sociologist are solely the author’s and not the editors or the Lancaster University Sociology Department.